


make sure you kiss your knuckles before punching me in the face

by Starful_nights



Series: placeholder title bc no spoilers <3 [1]
Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: California (Comics)
Genre: (mentioned) - Freeform, Gen, Scorpions too i think?, Snakes, Spiders, Zones Religion and Lore (Fabulous Killjoys), also im binge listening to tma rn so some worms, im not selling this story rn but ghoul makes friends, tattoos that move and are occasionally...not tattoos, the creatures are all real nice and just a side effect, they arent malicious tho. steve the snakes thinks they're tasty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:22:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28386192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starful_nights/pseuds/Starful_nights
Summary: "Another holiday alone, so what?"Ghoul goes to a Mad Gear concert, makes some friends, and wildly misremembers the dates of winter celebrations.
Relationships: Fun Ghoul & Kobra Kid & Show Pony & Mad Gear, Fun Ghoul & Kobra Kid (Danger Days), Fun Ghoul & Mad Gear (Danger Days), Fun Ghoul & Show Pony (Danger Days), Show Pony/Mad Gear, aka the chaos quartet, same here - Relationship, why isnt this a tag their friendship deserves more
Series: placeholder title bc no spoilers <3 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2078967
Comments: 6
Kudos: 2





	make sure you kiss your knuckles before punching me in the face

**Author's Note:**

> title is from twin size mattress by the front bottoms 
> 
> this was supposed to be done several days ago but xmas happened then the magnus archives happened (is happening so like. sorry for any other delays my soul has been consumed /lh) but uh. tadaa!!
> 
> the judaism headcanons were made by moon (moondragon8 here i think?) in this post i can't link properly bc it wont fucking work so pls paste it in sorry <\3 https://bread--quest.tumblr.com/post/637787199312691200/zones-hanukkah-masterpost

Ghoul thought it might be Christmas. Was Christmas at the longest night? Or was that Witch’s day? Or Yule? Was the new year starting now? Like it mattered anyway, how the time flew while xe was alone in the desert, running from yet another group of people xe managed to anger. Xe hoped xe broke out a full-on gang war this time. It would be fun to watch from half a zone away. 

His motorbike seemed to be worried for him, how sweet. Xe sometimes regretted letting it gain semi-sentience, though.

“I’m fine, Milo. Another...some fucking holiday alone, so what? Never liked Christmas anyway. The giant menorah thingy is so much neater in my opinion. Trees are boring.”

Milo seemed to like trees, though, because it stopped. Fucking hell.

“Milo, hon, please. What’m I supposed to do? Find some new friends outta nowhere?”

Milo started steering him away from the road, which was genuinely ridiculous, what was xe supposed to do, drive into a fucking tree?

The sudden stop nearly launched him out sprawling on the sand.

“Fuckin’ ‘ell, Milo, what’s so special about this specific spot of dirt?”

Milo just turned towards the dirty flier lying on the ground. Ghoul sighed.

“A Mad Gear concert? At the solstice thing? I don’t think many people’re gonna be there, kiddo.”

That’s exactly why, Milo seemed to say. 

“Oh well. Less of a chance of seeing someone who wants to punch my face in, huh? It’s only in North Five, too. Only an hour or two. You’re really clever, huh, Mills?”

Milo looked as much like smiling as a motorcycle could.

Ghoul’s favourite tattoo, a spider with sixteen legs like his childhood pet, was crawling on his face again. 

“Junie, I know you show affection like this, but I can't trust Milo not t’ drive into a ditch while I try to bat ya away so you stop making the skin around me eyes crawl, oki?”

Junie clambered over to his shoulder, and her place was taken by the butterfly. The fleeting thought that maybe xe wasn’t as alone as xe thought fleeted through his mind, but it fleeted out right along with the butterfly who evidently thought it was time to detach itself from Ghoul’s face and blind him for a few seconds, colours shining in the golden light, then hitting against the radio which Ghoul turned off a few hours ago when ‘Highway to Hell’ came up right as xe started going towards the town that was now in a full-on gang war. (Yes, it only took him three hours, what of it?)

Yeah, Ghoul thought as The Missile Kid’s cover of a 100 Gecs song played loudly on the empty Route Guano and he found himself singing along, his songbird tattoo screeching to the rhythm, xe really needed to see some real people who didn’t hate him soon. (No, Milo, bikes aren’t people, we’ve been over this.) 

The concert was already going when xe got there, and xe was right, it wasn’t a big crowd. Instead of the usual about a half to two third of the current Zone (plus some from the neighbors), it was only, what? A fifth? Sixth? Still there were quite a few people, and statistically, xe’d’ve made about ten people here hate him in the past. Yay. 

Mad Gear brought faer usual screeching and the noise that reminded Ghoul of why xe became a killjoy in the first place. It was the noise, the colour, the brightness, the fighting against the City. All the things that made his life seem worth living. If this was some really fucked up Christmas movie, xe would realise right about now how good this holiday really was, and how important love was or some shit. Xe had an entire life’s experience against this, but whatever. Mad Gear concerts were fun. It just happened to be on some holiday. It was probably Witch-day. She was a fan of darkness. 

After the concert, Ghoul was ready to just leave or maybe try and get someone to let him sleep at the venue because xe really wasn’t in the mood to go out in the dark again, when a familiar face who wasn’t out to get him for a change almost knocked him over.

“Ghoulie, hon! Fancy seeing ya here! Weren’t ya supposed t’be in West Five right now? Not complainin’, it’s always good t’ see someone familiar out here. ‘Ts such a shame we didn;t meet earlier, I could’a taken y’ to the menorah. I know y’r not the religious type, but boy do we need a real cook there next year, not t’be rude, but I was desperately tryna avoid eatin’ raw cactus an’ it still happened. I’m achin’ t’ go back to the station soon, though, I’m missin’ all my fav’rite DJ boys. Act’lly, wanna come backstage with me? Madsie’s plannin’ on havin’ a small party, only me’ an’ faer an’ some of th’ guys, maybe, plus Miss if ‘e isn’t off on a different party,” Show Pony said, in almost one breath, and Ghoul laughed.

“Sure, why not?”

“Okay, com’n! I think I saw th’ Kobra Kid ‘round here, too, I gotta introduce y’two!”

Ghoul let xemself be dragged around while Pony looked for the Kobra Kid--the best racer since Untitled, it’s amazing what crowd y’ get to be around when you’re friends with Pony--listening to aer endless stories and jokes, and feeling a lot less alone. 

Soon xe got introduced to Kobra, all sunglasses and bleached hair and fancy bright jacket, like many people xe really shouldn’t’ve crossed but did anyway, but so unlike any of them. They seemed to click instantly. 

"You have a scorpion in your hair," xe said.

"It's just Queenie. Don't worry about sss. Anyways, you have a large spider on your neck," he replied.

"Fuck. She un-tattooed again?" Ghoul said, and xe could've sworn Junie scowled at him before going back to ink.

Ghoul couldn't help but wonder how this is all going to go wrong, and immediately got answers.  
Turns out, The Missile Kid went off with ‘the guys’ Pony was referring to, and the impromptu party consists of him, Kobra, Pony, and fucking Mad Gear. Yeah, yeah, fae’s Pony’s girlfriend, and they had met before, but xe was literally just on one of faer concerts! 

It turned out to be not as bad as xe expected it to, as Pony’s presence made any situation un-awkward immediately (or in this case, after five minutes of Mads chugging coffee and not saying anything).

“You know, I think nobody in this Zone knows how to make proper cactus juice,” Kobra said at one point, and Ghoul just had to prove him wrong, which is how they ended up sitting around a campfire, brewing cactus juice à la Fun Ghoul, and telling stories. Turns out, the snake Kobra was talking about accidentally adopting is right here and immediately taking to Junie. Having a real snake on your shoulder, quietly hissing at your spider tattoo, is very different than having your snake tattoo curl on your shoulder, Ghoul learned. (The snake in question fled to Ghoul’s stomach when he saw ‘steve, in lowercase because he’s tiny’.)

The cactus juice turned out great (even if it wasn't radioactive enough to Ghoul’s taste), and, according to Mads, even better than the official Jump Juice. Fae even offered to help him start a new brand. Xe refused, knowing that xe wouldn’t have many customers considering that Chow Mein hated his face, but it was nice to know someone appreciated him at least. 

The night flew by quickly, and before they knew it, the sky started lightening. Ghoul sighed and put down the snake he was cradling in his hands, not sure if it was steve or Slithy the tattoo who escaped his skin hours ago. 

“I guess I’d better go,” xe said, and called for Slithy to hop back onto his skin. It tickled. 

“Home?” Kobra asked, eyes half-closed. 

“Don’t really have one’a those,” xe shrugged. “But there’s this one spot where all my tattoos like to hunt an’ stuff, an’ I haven’t been back there since Hanukkah started as it’s real close to th’ giant menorah. Kinda miss it by now.” 

“Hey, can I come see that, too? If you wouldn't mind. It seems to be important to you, but I really want to find a good place for steve an' the others to hunt and I really don't wanna go home just yet. I mean, I love my sibling and my friends, but in the desert, alone with just my bike and some of my pets? It's heaven on Earth."

Ghoul nodded fervently.

"I know exactly what you mean. C'mon, it's not too far off."

To Milo's disappointment, Kobra's bike wasn't semi-sentient, but at least Queenie got Junie out of Ghoul's hair while xe was driving--literally, as her favourite sitting place was in Ghoul's hair or on his neck, in both ink and flesh forms. 

The sun wasn't fully up when they got to the warehouse with half of it blown off in a large storm that Ghoul didn't call home, but it was close enough. It had four sides, a roof and a floor--after xe fixed two of the sides and the roof, and the floor over a large hole made by something Ghoul didn't want to know about anyway--and it had loads of small weird and slightly radioactive worms for their various pets-slash-tattoos. (Ghoul should've been more worried about the worms, but they didn't try to eat him, so it was probably fine.)

Kobra seemed to like the place, and so did steve, Steve Two: The Bigger One, and Queenie, along with a large assortment of others. Ghoul was liking Kobra more with every single creature he turned out was friends with.

As the sun started to come up, painting the colours of the Zones in a slightly more golden light, Ghoul realised that xe had just made a friend, maybe two, and possibly even three.

Xe concluded that it was the best feeling in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> this fits into the same canon as my other fic untitled, so go check that out if you want to ! it's the other part of this series (so far...?)
> 
> also i posted this with the two steve snakes before i remembered captain america exists <\3 not gonna change it anymore tho its not an intentional reference


End file.
